Visiting Artist Lecture: Firelei Báez

Firelei Báez was born in Santiago de los Caballeros and lives and works in New York. She makes intricate works on paper and canvas as well as large-scale sculpture. Through a convergence of interests in anthropology, science fiction, black female subjectivity, and women’s work, her art explores the humor and fantasy involved in self-making within diasporic societies. Báez received an MFA from Hunter College, a BFA from the Cooper Union’s School of Art, and studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work is the subject of 2019 solo exhibitions at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; James Cohan, New York; and the Mennello Museum of Art, Orlando, Florida. The artist’s monumental outdoor sculpture “19.604692°N 72.218596°W” is included in En Plein Air, the 2019 High Line Art exhibition. Her current commission for the Modern Window at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, is on view through November.